Why? Because not enough people do anything about it

First off I want to offer my sympathies to all who have lost animals due to flea and tick products. It’s a very hard thing to deal with emotionally. You do something to try to help your pet and it causes injury and all to often death. How do you cope with it? We all find different ways to deal with the loss and time will help what you are feeling. There are no magic words to make you feel better or bring your pets back. What you can do is to turn your grief and anger into action.

I see so many of you asking why is this stuff still being sold. Why isn’t there a lawsuit. I’d be alot more encouraged if I saw a few how can I help or what can I do about this instead of why’s.

By action I mean go to the, “Need Help” page. You will find all the info required to make your voice heard. Contact all the places listed there. File complaints with them. Write lettes if they don’t take complaints. Trust me you have to do this . If everyone who had ever had a pet hurt of killed did this maybe we would be a lot closer to getting this stuff off the shelves.

I have been involved in this fight since 2001. Myself and another person who’s animals were also hurt penned the first petition and sent it in. Didn’t do much good. I was also in the first lawsuit. That ended when Hartz bullied the person who started it Settled out of court ,you could get the cost of the product and any vet costs. You had to sign their multi paged agreement saying that you would never say anything bad about Hartz. No I didn’t sign it.

Instead I got a news station to do a piece on Hartz. I got lucky and the news station told Hartz they were not pulling the piece when Hartz threatened legal action, something Hartz is famous for.

I saw the EPA ask Hartz to relable their products with a stronger warning and more specific direction. Apparently Hartz had told the EPA that Americans were using the dog product on cats in most of the complaints. I don’t know about you but cat and dog were some of the first words I learned to read in school.

That of course didn’t do much good so the EPA got Hartz to actually pull 2 products. They gave them a year to pull the products. That year cost a lot of animals their lives. Then the EPA allowed Hartz to replace those products LOL now the packages say 99% inert ingriedants. They also let Hartz get away with doing their own testing of the products.

The last big event was an online conference with the EPA, Hartz, other makers of similar products and a few others . No they didn’t pull anymore Hartz products. They put out a warning that I can no longer find on the EPA’s web site.

The best thing I have seen was an individual at long last actually took hartz to court and won. The was a big first. despite many many people trying to do it before and Hartz counter suing all of them for more money than most of us make in 2 years a man in Texas did win. Doesn’t sound like much but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how low I have seen Hartz go

I don’t know if we can ever get Hartz and such off the shelves, I’m thinking probably not because they make so much money of cheap flea products. You can do something that will help. You can tell every person you know and meet not to use these products. Warn them they could very easily cause serious injuury or kill their animals. If you see someone in a store looking at tthese products start up a conversation. Say, ” Excuse me but I used that product and it killed my cat or dog or it hurt them It caused burns to their necks. It cost me X amount of dollars in Vet bills to save them or to try to save them. I just wanted you to know because so many animals have died I wouldn’t want yours to be hurt”. “I just wish someone had told me about them before I used them.” Tell them about this web site if they look like they don’t believe you. All they need to do is read a few of the thousands of pages here . If you do this you may very well save an animals life and it doesn’t cost you a cent to do.

If you want posters or flyer’s we can send you one to make copy’s of to hand out. I’ll even go as far as to work up special flyers if you want something on it they don’t have If you have a web site or a friend with one put a link to this site on it. Tell your stories on Facebook. Tweet out warnings and keep doing it. Don’t just do it once make a habit of it. If your writing the EPA, make a dozen copy’s and send them 1 a week

Just do something don’t let what has happened to you and your animals slide. It will make you feel better and it will help the cause.